Piece of paper records news of Kennedy assassination as it broke

Thursday

Nov 21, 2013 at 6:15 PM

Milo Hill, now 81, was working at Southern Bell in Spartanburg as news bulletins came over about President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Hill saved the teletype and shared it with us on the 50th anniversary of the president's death.

By Jenny Arnoldjennifer.arnold@shj.com

ROEBUCK - From a nondescript, business-size envelope, history unfolds in Milo Hill's living room, as it did in a Spartanburg telephone company office on Nov. 22, 1963.Hill, now 81, was working at Southern Bell in Spartanburg in the toll test room as news bulletins came in on the wire service and microwave feed for WSPA.At first, it wasn't clear what was going on in Dallas. But the CBS broadcast was interrupted, so those working in the toll test room knew it was something important about President John F. Kennedy."We had no idea what kind of incident," Hill said. "Just that something terrible had happened regarding the president's car."Hill plugged in the teletype machine, which could print 100 words a minute, to help monitor the entire system and make sure everything was working properly. The machine began producing copy on standard-width paper. Now yellowed but in excellent condition without a single tear, the document has been folded up in that plain white envelope and stored in a dresser drawer. Over the years, Hill said he's taken it out and read it a few times, and he wanted to share it on the 50th anniversary of the president's death. He begins reading the bulletins aloud, but has to stop. It's too emotional.The first bulletin to come in stated that priests had been summoned for the president, followed by sports news that Auburn basketball coach Joel Eaves had been named athletic director of the University of Georgia, followed by news of the sale of the Detroit Lions.Here is a bulletin from Dallas: Two Roman Catholic priests have been summoned to the emergency room where the president is. A White House spokesman said someone had asked for the priests.That transmission was followed by statements of a much lighter tone, describing the enthusiastic welcome the president and first lady Jackie Kennedy received as they arrived in Dallas, even mentioning the iconic pink suit the young and glamorous president's wife wore.The First Lady walked with the President to shake hands with the crowd behind a barrier. She carried a bouquet of red roses which clashed furiously with the fuschia color of her two-piece suit...At one point Mrs. Kennedy almost lost one of her white gloves but retrieved it quickly...There was considerable female squealing over the president and lust male shouts of "Hey Jackie"Other bulletins from Dallas followed, each more somber than the last — raw copy with little punctuation.Witnesses said there were three loud bursts of gunfire. Motorcycle police escorting the president quickly leaped from their bikes and raced up a grassy hill."That's the grassy knoll everyone talked about," Hill said.Other updates followed. The New York Stock Exchange closed for the rest of the day. Texas Gov. John Connally was shot, too. The president was given a transfusion of B-positive blood. It wasn't immediately clear whether Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had been wounded, as he had been seen walking into the emergency room holding his arm. Mrs. Johnson later shook her head when reporters asked whether the vice president had been hurt and did not speak further with them.Then an update that most Americans have seen over and over in the years since the assassination, caught on film and shown in numerous documentaries and newscasts since 1963.On being shot Kennedy fell face down in the back seat of his car. Blood was on his head. Mrs. Kennedy who was with him cried "Oh no." And tried to hold up his head.Pandemonium broke loose around the scene. The Secret Service promptly waved the motorcade on at top speed to nearby Parkland Hospital.However, even at top speed it took five minutes to reach the ambulance entrance of the hospital.

- Bulletin -President Kennedy has been given the last holy rites of the Roman Catholic Church. A Catholic priest who helped perform the last rites said he did not believe the president was dead.

- Bulletin -President Kennedy is dead. He died in a hospital after being cut down by an assassin's bullet while his motorcade was moving along on the outskirts of Dallas. Texas Gov. John Connally also was shot. There is no word on his fate.First word of the president's death came from two priests as they left Parkland Hospital. Their announcement brought audible sobs from a crowd of scores of newsmen and other citizens.

- 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time -Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas was talking with newsmen just before announcement of the president's death. Yarborough collapsed in sobs as he told of witnessing the slaying...... Yarborough had been riding three cars behind the president's and told reporters: "You could tell something awful and tragic had happened. I could see a Secret Service man in the president's car leaning on the car with his hands in anger anguish and despair."Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy was presiding over the Senate that day when he received the news that his older brother had been shot in Dallas.An aide informed him (Ted) and he rushed from the Senate chamber.Attorney Gen. Robert Kennedy the president's younger brother and closest adviser was having lunch at home when word of his brother's shooting reached him.(Robert) Kennedy's personal secretary said the Attorney General was remaining at the Kennedy Hickory Hill Estate in McLean Virginia.Newsmen carried the word to the House Speaker John McCormack at the luncheon table."This is terrible" he said in an almost inaudible voice. "All I can say is that it is a terrible thing and all Americans of all religions and faiths are praying for the president and Governor Connally."Hill was 31 years old at the time and a veteran of the Korean war, having served three years in the U.S. Army.He remembers that day, working in the toll test room at the Southern Bell building at 461 E. Main St."It's almost like you're standing still in time," he said, as the news came in word by word, in all caps from a spiderweb of telegraph wires, on Nov. 22, 1963. "Everything stops. You don't know what's next."But there wasn't an outpouring of grief in the room, among the male workers who had served overseas in World War II and Korea. They continued to work, monitoring the system, taking calls from customers like modern-day information technicians."Most of us had military backgrounds; we had seen things happen," he said. "Men do what they have to get through it."Hill's wife, Merle, 77, said her mother-in-law lived nearby and walked to her house to tell her of the president's death while Milo was at work."I was just in shock," Merle Hill said. "I would have never had thought of being alive when there had been an assassination. I used to listen to (President Kennedy's) press conferences on the radio. He was so witty."As that fateful day progressed, more bulletins carried background about the 35th president, who was the first Catholic and the youngest president ever elected.Kennedy was the first American chief executive to face the possibility of nuclear warfare. And he risked it with a show of force to protect American interests. But later he succeeded in achieving an accord with Russia limiting nuclear tests.On the domestic front Kennedy was confronted by a racial problem which epitomized a contemporary world issue--the tense relationship between the black and white races.More information also came in about a possible suspect.Police already have spread a giant dragnet around the city searching for the assassin.The man being sought is described as a white man about 30 of slender build and weighing about 165.He apparently shot the president with a thirty-thirty rifle.

- Bulletin -Although first reports said President Kennedy was shot from an overpass television reporter Mal Couch says he saw a gun emerge from an upper story of a warehouse commanding an unobstructed view of the presidential car.The paper and copy that came from the teletype machine usually was thrown away and incinerated every day. But by the end of that November day, an indelible memory in the minds of every American who lived it, Hill knew the more than six feet of paper bulletins and news flashes from Dallas should be kept."This was like wire tapping," Hill said. "We were not authorized to get that for our information. But I realized the importance of this, realized that was something that should not be destroyed."

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